Trump has caused the entire world to debate whether Putin, who has essentially just admitted to all manner of bad behavior, whether he is more or less credible than Clapper and Brennan. And that’s a legitimate question that we’re actually talking about. We’re actually having that conversation. He did that. Now that’s as hard as you can shake a box.

They’re saying even Newt Gingrich is freaking out. Yeah, you know when you see somebody like Newt have such a strong statement, if you didn’t see it Newt tweeted that he wasn’t too specific but whatever, I think you’re talking about the intel versus Putin question and that if the president doesn’t clarify that it’s the biggest mistake of his presidency. I agree with Newt. I agree with Newt that if the president didn’t clarify what he meant about our own intel agencies versus Putin, if he didn’t clarify that it would be one of the biggest mistakes of his presidency. But then he clarified it. Wink wink. Here’s the clarification. I want to read the actual tweet but I don’t want to make you wait. The clarification was we have to let go of the past. That’s the clarification. Because when you see we have to let go of the past and you see it next to “Putin says he didn’t do this stuff,” now you can hear the wink. If you take away the first statement about ignoring the past to get to the next level then you can’t hear the wink. All you hear is, “Wait a minute, did I just hear the president say our own intel was no more reliable than this lying dictator guy? I’ve got a problem. What’s going on here?”

So was Newt correct? Absolutely. What Trump said was so misconstrued because people didn’t quite get why he was going for that. Without a clarification it would be a big mistake. And then the president did the best you can do in this situation because you can’t actually go in public and say, “Look could you just go along with this? I’m just trying to play nice with this guy because we need him. All right, we all know that they interfered with the election, nobody is, or at least they attempted to change the result.” You can’t say that. And you don’t want to. The best he can do is give you enough clues so that you can hear the wink. And if you don’t hear the wink yet you’re missing the show.

All right, now one of the most fun answers at the press conference, when they asked Putin if he cared who won the presidency and he said yeah we preferred Trump. First of all I don’t know that that was true, right, because we’re talking about two people who didn’t say anything true for 24 hours. You know between Putin and Trump they’re both playing a diplomatic dance which in this case required no truth. It was a truth-free process by both players that actually is probably getting us to a productive place or at least we hope that’s the plan. In any way that if we play well together and just sort of ignore the reality of what we’ve done to each other in the past, maybe we have a chance of moving on.

So the fact that Putin said he preferred Trump of course just makes all the conspiracy theorists go nuts. But here’s an interesting question. This is one of those questions that is too painful to think about so which is why I like to mention it. What if, now this is something I’m not allowed to say because the moment I say it I’ll be called a traitor and treasonous and I’ll be taken out of context. So let me preface it by saying I really like the United States. I like it much more than I like Putin. All right, so just so you know the United States, excellent. Putin, just somebody we have to work with. All right, so there’s, I’m not comparing them or anything like that. But what would happen in theory if Putin thought he knew what was good for the United States and it happened to be good for Russia at the same time? Because those two things are connected, right? If the United States and Russia are good with each other then both of them prosper. And if we’re not good with each other then we’re both in some trouble in big ways. You know, North Korea, Iran and Russia itself. So what if hypothetically Putin actually thought that President Trump was better for both America and Russia? What if he actually thought that was true? And what if he honestly thought, no I’m not trying to destroy the United States, that’s crazy. How the hell am I going to destroy the United States? And destabilizing it wouldn’t even be good for me. But one of these candidates might be good for Russia and good for the United States and that we both win. So yeah, traitor. He jails and kills reporters. So my statement is it’s entirely possible that Russia and the United States might have the same interests on some questions. And for those of you who see the world as black and white, either you’re a traitor or you’re a patriot, well sometimes the world is less clean than that.

All right, does anybody feel more comfortable with their presidency after listening to this Periscope? Because if you weren’t hearing the wink it was pretty scary stuff. But if you do hear the wink all he’s doing is the same play he did with North Korea. You could just say Russia is North Korea minus two months, right?

So my prediction is this. There is no way to know that things will go well in the future or not. But Trump has shook the box and took the heat because the old way of thinking absolutely wasn’t going to work and the new way of thinking might work or might not work but it probably won’t be worse. So he shook the box, he got us a new situation. And what would happen, let me ask you, what would happen if whatever Putin and Trump came up with, what happens if we don’t see the results we want? Let’s say Putin once again interferes with the midterm elections. What would be the right response? Well I think Trump would shake that box again. So if you’re thinking that the United States is locked into a plan that we will ride forever no matter whether it works or not, I think you’re looking at the wrong president. This president is willing to shake that box as many times as he needs to shake it and take the heat for shaking it.

But you got to hear the wink or none of this works. Nobody believes Putin’s telling the truth. Nobody. Not the president, not anybody believes that Russia stays out of our business nor does anybody believe we stay out of their business. But I do believe that the two leaders talk to each other and this is the part though, you know I wasn’t in the room but I feel fairly convinced that this is likely to be the nature of their private conversation. There’s nothing in this for either of us to be enemies. There’s just nothing to win. There’s no upside. But we are willing to work with you on these things that are important to all of us.

And I would say Rand Paul has, I think Rand Paul is the only person in government, maybe the only citizen, who came out of this looking good because he didn’t say a single thing that wasn’t either factual, based on good reason, reasonable, etc. You know I’m not sure I would necessarily back Rand Paul for president after Trump leaves. You know I’m not sure I agree with all of his policies. But you just saw some high-level behavior there that I don’t know that Rand Paul was always playing at this level. It feels like he took it up a level to presidential level. I don’t think he was quite at presidential level before but it feels like he’s definitely started to check all the boxes.

All right, any other questions? All right, well I’m glad I made you feel better. I wanted to get to this early, see if it has any impact on the coverage today. But if you don’t understand that President Trump also does not believe Putin then the entire story doesn’t make sense. And there’s not a single chance in the world that President Trump believes what Putin is saying. Not any chance in the world. All right, so feel comfortable with that and I will talk to all of you later.